Many devices have been provided over the recent past for locking together a pair of members for securing them in a temporarily selected position. The commonest of these, of course, is the conventional nut and bolt, the disadvantages of which are that the parts may become lost, a wrench is required to tighten the nut and considerable manual effort must be expended. Other types of devices include headed pins with some form of wedge means driven through a slot in the unheaded end of the pin. Here again the parts are separable and are subject to loss.
The present invention is directed especially to instances involving relative heavy steel structures; e.g., one including a base or bed over which a second structure may be moved, as about a pivot. In an instance in which the pivoted member lies below the base, some amount of sag will be present, and this must be eliminated when the base and bed are locked together. It often occurs that one or the other of the members will include a channel member in the area in which locking must take place, making it difficult if not impossible to insert a headed pin from above and likewise rendering it disadvantageous to insert the pin from below while attempting to insert a wedge or the like from above.
According to the present invention, these and other problems are eliminated by the provision of a pin having at its upper end a recess, preferably in the form of a slot that opens axially as well as diametrically of the pin. A pawl member is carried in the slot on a pin crosswise of the slot and the pawl is so shaped as to have a long dimension greater than the diameter of the pin and a short dimension at least not substantially greater than the pin diameter. The slot has such depth that, when the pawl is positioned with its long dimension in prolongation of the pin, the pin may be inserted through alined apertures from below, after which the pawl is turned ninety degrees so that the pawl spans the upper aperture and prevents the pin from falling out. The lower end of the pin has lug means there that will be spaced below the lower member. A tool is provided for wedging action between the lug means and the lower member for forcing the lower member tightly upwardly into face-to-face contact with the upper member, thus securing the two members rigidly together. The tool is in the form of a lever having a bifurcated end providing interior hooks for engagement with the diametrically projecting lug means and exterior cam surfaces for creating the wedging action.